It seems the only thing that is not under threat - so far - is our own little corner of the park.

All over Teesside, it seems, movement and transformation is the order of the day.

Whether it's the Gresham area of Middlesbrough, Grangetown, Whinney Banks or downtown Thornaby, change is in the air.

Many people, of course, are frightened of change.

They do not want to see familiar streets and houses fall under the swinging hammers.

But change is inevitable.

If it wasn't, we'd all still be living in wattle and daub long-huts.

But the agencies and local councils overseeing the process of change should also have a duty to be frank about what will be replacing the red brick terraces and the prefabricated 1950s council houses.

And that's the problem.

Given the way the system works, they don't have the ability to give the hand on heart assurance that, at the end of the rainbow, there will be the quality new homes of the kind that people want and deserve.

And older people have got memories of what happened last time we underwent these big new building schemes.

In place of the old two up, two downs, we saw new high-rise flats and sprawling anonymous rows of overspill estates, places lacking the cosy neighbourhood shops, pubs and clubs that held communities together.

And the extended family network that acted as the cement bond for this social fabric was also fatally ruptured, never to recover.

These estates were the monument to the arrogance of the planners and civil servants who thought that people would be happy and content to live in a breezeblock legoland.

It wasn't that much better for owner occupiers either.

They might have thought that their ability to afford a mortgage would give them, in the old phrase, a home fit for heroes.

But, instead, all too many ended up with cramped little bungalows or semis.

The fake McMansions of the volume house builders can be found right across Teesside in places like Ingleby Barwick and the outskirts of places like Marske, Redcar and Eaglescliffe.

Too many people sense an imagined conspiracy between the planners, the architects, the civil servants and the housebuilders to steal our sense of identity and history.

We have towns with a great past, and which could - with imagination and flair - still have a great future.

We shouldn't deny that history and that heritage.

What we should be building are new communities reflecting the best of the old, new industries with all the confidence and innovation that was shown by the Victorian ironmasters and engineers and a rural hinterland that is a living, working countryside - not just desolate prairies growing EU-subsidised rape oil seed or weed-infested 'set-aside' fields.

My message to the developers and the planners is a plain and simple one. Tread gently, because you could be treading on our memories.